Showing posts with label Lake Mary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lake Mary. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Catastrophic Weather Events and the High Cost of Living Make Flyover Country More Appealing

 Wildfires in Los Angeles have driven thousands of Angelinos out of their homes, and many won't return. California, with its spectacular weather and stunning beauty, has become too difficult for anyone but the wealthy to live.

Catastrophic weather events--wildfires, mudslides, and earthquakes--coupled with stratospheric real estate prices, sky-high taxes, and directionless political leadership have transformed paradise into a nightmare for people of modest means.

So, where will discouraged Californians go? Many are going to Texas and Florida, but taxes and the cost of living have climbed in those sunny states.

 Austin, known for its low cost of living in the 1970s when I was a student at the University of Texas, has become so expensive that a person of modest means can't afford to migrate there. 

Florida has been a retirement haven for almost a century but has become too pricey for many older Americans on fixed incomes. And then there are the hurricanes.

How about Flyover country? Would that be a good region to move to? 

The Cambridge Dictionary defines Flyover Country as "parts of the United States which many people only see when they fly over them on journeys to the other coast, but which they would never visit." In other words, Flyover Country is made up of the regions of the U.S. that were once known as Middle America or the Heartland.

As the Wall Street Journal noted in a recent article, some parts of Flyover Country are becoming increasingly attractive—specifically Middle Appalachia: 

Drawn by lower housing costs and living expenses, lower taxes, lower insurance costs, low crime, warm weather (but with seasons) and less chance of hurricanes, an older, wealthier population is arriving [in Middle Appalachia]and demanding a level of services from governments and businesses that neither had to provide in the past.

Other parts of Flyover Country are just as enticing but have yet to be discovered by the frazzled Americans trying to escape the high cost of living on the East and West Coasts.

I live on Lake Mary in South Mississippi, in the heart of Flyover Country, and I find it a congenial place to live. I admit that Lake Mary is not as prestigious as Lake Tahoe. We fish for catfish here instead of rainbow trout, but real estate is a lot cheaper in Mississippi than in the famous Nevada vacation spot, and the people are more interesting. 

And life in South Mississippi offers attractions you can't find on Cape Cod or the Hamptons. For example, we have an alligator season in Mississippi, and you can hunt feral hogs here day or night all year round. 

Marlin fishing in the Keys is all well and good, but it's nothing like hooking into a monster alligator gar or Asian carp on Lake Mary. And you can take my word: a fried Mississippi catfish tastes as good as any seafood you will eat on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. 

Not all Flyover Country is idyllic. We need better schools in the rural South and an economy that produces more middle-class jobs. Nevertheless, as coastal cities become increasingly expensive and crime rates rise, Flyover Country might be a better place to live and raise a family.

Image credit:  TV Tropes





Monday, October 28, 2024

Wild Pigs Divert My Attention from LSU's Disastrous Loss to Texas A&M

It’s Saturday evening at Lake Mary, Mississippi, and my family has congregated around our big-screen TV to watch LSU play Texas A&M in College Station. It’s a big game: LSU is ranked Number 8 in the national polls, and the Aggies are rated Number 14. Neither team has lost a Southeast Conference game.

I am filled with a sense of well-being. Loved ones are gathered around me. Cold beer is in the refrigerator, and we have plenty of game-time snacks. I adjust my Lazy Boy recliner to a comfortable semi-prone position.

All goes well in the first half, and LSU shows good prospects of beating the insufferable Aggies. Then, my team falls apart. Three interceptions and three missed field goals attest to a Tiger meltdown. I prepare myself for a major case of the weekend blues. We’re running out of beer.

Then providence intervenes. The game camera affixed to a pecan tree alerts us to two feral hogs rooting about in our three-acre front yard. All distress about the ballgame vanishes, and two family members break out their rifles from our gun safe. Armed with a 30.06 and a 30-30, they creep down to my home’s ground level and start shooting.

Both pigs squeal and head for the brush. The smaller hog is mortally wounded but manages to travel about 50 yards before succumbing to her wounds. Two generations of family members with flashlights follow the blood trail and find the interloper. She is stone dead.

What to do with a dead feral hog? Family members truss it up to one of the steel girders that keep our living quarters above the annual spring flood waters. Then they field dress the pig, dividing it into hams, ribs, pork shoulders, and backstrap. 

The hog slayers ice down the meat in a large ice chest and call it a night. We learn that LSU lost to A &M by a score of 38-23, but nobody cares.

The next morning, I propose we take all the hog meat to a nearby game processing plant and turn it into pork chops, sausage, and dinner-size pork loins. I offer to foot the bill.

We vote, and everyone except me opts to process the hog on our kitchen counter. By two in the afternoon, our feral hog is parceled and tucked away in the freezer--about a hundred pounds of meat.

Feral hogs are a major nuisance in the rural South, where they tear up the landscape and destroy crops. People are allowed to hunt them year-around by day or night. 

Everyone I know who has eaten wild-pig meat tells me that the small porkers are delicious. Thus, I ended my weekend feeling good about my family's contribution to feral hog control. And I'm looking forward to eating a pig harvested in my own front yard.

Who cares who won the LSU-Texas A&M game?